Bryce Harper will participate in Arizona Fall League [UPDATED AGAIN]

No. 1 overall draft pick Bryce Harper will join the Nationals' contingent in the Arizona Fall League on Sunday, making him the second-youngest player in the history of a league that General Manager Mike Rizzo described as baseball at "probably its highest level beyond the big leagues."

Though Harper will be a member of the Scottsdale Scorpions "taxi squad" instead of a full participant, the decision to send him at all shows the high level of confidence the Nationals' brain-trust has in their 17-year-old, power-hitting outfielder. After turning 18 Saturday, Harper will become only the third 18-year-old to play in the Arizona Fall League.

"I recognize that this kid is going into a situation that is pretty unprecedented," Rizzo said. "He's going to be an 18-year-old player in an extremely accelerated league. But we feel the trade-off of getting this kid to work out for two months in that environment was well worth the opportunity of him struggling a little bit in such an advanced league. With this kid's ability level and this kid's attitude, it's certainly not going to retard his progress. We think the two months he'll be playing under these conditions is going to accelerate his developmental curve extremely."

Harper, who this week completed his first professional experience in the Nationals' Florida Instructional League, will not participate in full in Arizona while playing alongside the six other Nationals prospects for Scottsdale. As a "taxi squad" player, he will attend and participate in every practice and workout and dress for every game. He is eligible to play only two games per week, on Wednesday and Saturdays.

"His days off will be equally important," Nationals Director of Player Development Doug Harris said. "This gives us an opportunity to work with him with some intensity because we know he won't be in a ballgame. We can grind a lot of areas at the same time."

The Nationals plan for Harper to play mostly right field, the position he spent his time at the Instructional League learning for the first time and the position they envision him manning at Nationals Park in years to come. How soon is yet to be determined - "I don't have a crystal ball of what that is," Rizzo said - but his presence in the fall league is a clear sign the Nationals believe he could reach the majors quickly.

The league is advanced, comprised mostly of elite prospects at the Class AA level; last year's league featured current major league stars like Stephen Strasburg, Mike Stanton and Jason Heyward. The Nationals are willing to challenge Harper, who will turn 18 Saturday, as he begins his road to the majors.

"He's going to be immersed every day for two solid months with some of the best prospects in major league baseball," Rizzo said. "The guys who go to that league go to the big leagues relatively soon. ... I want him to see the accelerated portion of this league and to get two months more of really high-caliber and accelerated type of baseball. I just felt we weren't doing him justice by sending him home and working out with a high school team and lifting weights on his own."

When Harper dresses for Monday's game two days after his 18th birthday, even though he will not play, he will become the second-youngest player to don a uniform in the Arizona Fall League. Mets outfield prospect Fernando Martinez made his debut on his 18th birthday in 2006, two days younger than Harper will be.

In Arizona, Harper will spend time tweaking his swing and continuing his transition to the outfield under the watchful eyes of "some of our most highly valued staff members," Harris said. Class AA Harrisburg Manager Randy Knorr, one of the Nationals' most trusted player development specialists, is managing Scottsdale. During games he does not play, Harper will sit next Knorr and soak in his expertise, "to learn the game through Randy's eyes," Harris said.

Nationals hitting coach Rick Eckstein will also spend a portion of the fall league season in Arizona, as will player development lieutenant Bob Boone and Rizzo himself.

Upon drafting Harper with the first pick this June, Rizzo kept open the possibility of sending Harper to the fall league. His performance at the instructional league in Viera, Fla., only encouraged him. Harper embraced the camp and made his best adjustments at the plate in the final week.

"He did show he certainly was not over his head," Rizzo said. "He performed admirably, leading the team in all sorts of categories, a great performance at the plate and in the field. And he just became one of the guys. He was just one of the guys. His teammates really embraced him and took him into the fold. He fit in perfectly. It was a decision I had made in my mind prior to instructional league but was reinforced by his performance on and off the field in the instructional league."

>Brue is making the right calls on Harper. I guess Bryce was a little homesick, needed to go home for a birthday celebration, some of Mom's home cookin' & to get laundry done?

Come on Bryce. Make a splash.

Posted by: Sunderland

Yeah, the reason I say the things I do about this guy is that he can take the ball the other way with power. THAT'S the difference between him and virtually everyone else that's come up in the last 150 years. It shows he can keep his hands back, which is the main rule in hitting. Slump-proof. He can be more selective with his quick hands, and he can already get around on 95 mph, so the only thing left for him is to see pitchers who can throw 3 or 4 different pitches over the plate in different counts. Remember, most major league relievers can only throw ONE OR TWO pitches over for strikes. After he shows he can hit home runs by accident the other way, the last step is becoming acquainted with the actual pitchers he'll see in the big leagues. After that happens, you can push a button and send him out there and he'll probably ring up triple crown numbers. There's nothing holding him back but the competition.
The even sicker part is that most power hitters/phenoms, like Hamilton on the Rangers - they were saying he hadn't seen any fastballs during the playoffs and his production had slipped because he likes to PULL, as do most of them. Once they figure out Harper can hit a fastball 475 feet, they'll start throwing him breaking balls and off-speed stuff like they always do, and because he keeps his hands back so well, he gives himself a chance on those pitches moreso than virtually every other power hitter. In other words - HE'S ALREADY THERE>

I hear you Brue. As much as they'll want to, I hope the Nats don't rush him. You figure this kid has crushed the ball at every level and the most adversity he's probably had to deal with is not having the particular flavor of gatorade available he wants after the game, so the last thing we need to do is expose him to too much too soon. If he's the real deal, as advertised, he'll be here soon enough.

Come on Brue -- while I am as excited as the next guy over Harper, he aint slump proof and his ability to already get around on 95 mph stuff? The kid has never faced major league, or even minor league pitching. How man yAB's has he had with a wodden bat? The AFL is not Nevada junior college ball. Let's have the kid take 60-70 AB's or so this fall before we go and pronounce him the next Pujols.

>Come on Brue -- while I am as excited as the next guy over Harper, he aint slump proof and his ability to already get around on 95 mph stuff? The kid has never faced major league, or even minor league pitching. How man yAB's has he had with a wodden bat? The AFL is not Nevada junior college ball. Let's have the kid take 60-70 AB's or so this fall before we go and pronounce him the next Pujols.

Posted by: dfh21

He just faced minor league pitching in the instructional league. All of a week or two ago. I don't know what we'll see, but I do know that he's got his own category for everything. I hope we can get some decent video. MLB network will probably be circling, especially during the off-season. I don't care if he hits .111, as long as he goes the other way, and hits a couple out of the park.

This is good news because it keeps Harper engaged with the team and will be a good barometer of how ready he truly is. I also like that he is definitely starting in A Ball. Selfishly I hope he is in Potomac so I can catch him at a few games.

I'll admit to being wrong about Harper, and give props to posters like Brue who felt he was ready. If life-long scout types like Rizzo & Harper think he's ready for AFL-level competition, then "you've gotta turn the boy loose".
If he stumbles, they can do a 'reset' in April by starting him in Hagerstown; If he succeeds & picks it back up in Viera, you think seriously about Harrisburg (or higher).
Guys like Kaline & Yount made debuts to successful careers in their teens; Who am I to say it can't happen again?

>"I recognize that this kid is going into a situation that is pretty unprecedented," Rizzo said. "He's going to be an 18-year-old player in an extremely accelerated league. But we feel the trade-off of getting this kid to work out for two months in that environment was well worth the opportunity of him struggling a little bit in such an advanced league. With this kid's ability level and this kid's attitude, it's certainly not going to retard his progress. We think the two months he'll be playing under these conditions is going to accelerate his developmental curve extremely."

stevie -- I posted "How many AB's has he had with a wodden bat? The AFL is not Nevada junior college ball." (my fixing the bad typing added) Lying about what I was supposedly saying? No lie, no spin, no Kastenization of the facts. That is what I said.

And I aint wrong. But you are a pretty ridiculous person for the first post (stating that if a person did not know the JC circuit in Nevada uses wooden bats they should refarin from comment) and off the charts for the second one (calling out someone as being a liar when you do not have the facts straight).

dfh, if you mean something other than what you wrote, don't be surprised if people don't understand what you are saying.

Yours was not a statement much open to interpretation. However, if my inference (you saying that he's had none) was other than your implication (that he's had relatively few, and almost none against "pro" pitching), then that's fine. But unclear.

Again, I don't disagree - and I didn't come hard or personal: just pointing out that if you aren't correct about what you say, you will be corrected.

(YOUR inference is that I was saying you shouldn't comment - I was just pointing out you might want to refrain when you don't have your facts straight, e.g., saying that he's never hit with wooden bats when you don't know that he's had at least 228 junior college at-bats and been awarded the Golden Spikes with 'em.)

Again, I think we agree more than we disagree! Apologies to the blog for the hijacking.

@Drew8...Yeah, but Ruth was a pitcher and it was dead ball when he started.

@those dumping on Dfh...You're right. Actually, he switched to a wooden bat before he hit High School, so that all of those records he broke, at that level, were with a wood bat.

I'll repeat something I said earlier. Coddling players so that they don't get freaked (sorry Tim) out is, basically, restricted to pitchers. What is odd about Harper is that he spent most of his HS/JC career as a catcher, so obviously, he knows considerably more about the game than parallel position players. In other words, is much less likely to make stupid mistakes.

BTW, maybe it's me, but I don't remember the AFL being a full two months. Is that new, or are people "rounding"?

That Rube Goldberg machine of an explanation of yours as to why the plain menaing of my post was unclear and that jazz about you not having come hard or personal after telling me to "man up" and to stop lying is complete and utter BS. I meant what I wrote and it was as clear as day to everyone reading it, but for you. You read the sentece: "how many AB's has he had with a wooden bat?" to mean "he has not had any AB's with a wooden bat!".

You do not owe the blog an apology for hijacking, you owe me an apology for you being snide and arrogant and insulting. I won't hold my breath for one as I am sure you'd prefer to scribe more nonsense in further defense of your foolishness instead.

But now I owe the blog an apology for revisitng this nonsense; I participate in this blog often and I should know better than to respond to bunk like yours and to just ignore it. Lesson learned.

I am perfectly happy to revisit and apologize. If I inferred that you meant something other than what you meant, that's on me. And I apologize for saying that you were lying in defending yourself. If you read my initial comment, that was nothing personal. You responded, "but it got lost on you," and I came back hard.

You're still wrong about the wooden at-bats thing. As wrong as when you first wrote it, even if you mean he's had relatively few. It's just a bad point on which to rest your hat, given that he appears to have had as many wooden at-bats as any American 17 yr old post-1970. (And I'm not the only one who misunderstood you.)

I am wrong so very often about so many things, but is simply not possible for the language "How many AB's has he had with a wooden bat?" to be wrong. A question cannot be wrong.

And the point of the entire post was let's not annoint the kid as the Second Coming yet based on a small set of outcomes against low level competition.

Mashing to beat the band in 60-70 games in some JC league against 18-20 year old kids who were not good enough to go directly pro or to 4 year colleges? Great stuff, but not exactly a reliable barometer of whether the kid will be a HOF player in MLB.

dfh21, is there any reliable barometer whether someone this young will go to the HOF? Of course not. You seem to want to believe Harper has to prove himself before you are in his corner; others are in the position that until Harper fails they believe the hype; a classic glass half full, glass half empty kind of argument. We know what side you are on with this.

A question - when it is rhetorical, posed with an implicit point/answer - can absolutely be wrong.

But you corrected me. You genuinely wanted to know how many he'd had, so I and others have given you answers.

Following SC, there are no reliable barometers of HOF play in high school. But there are indicators. This kid's "indicators" are as good as anyone's, and perhaps better specifically BECAUSE of his unusual wooden-bat-factor, which is the exact opposite of the point you originally tried to make/made.

I agree: don't anoint him the next Pujols, Second Coming, etc. But no one is trying to do so.

We're making judgments based on performance - the same thing that has been done with every other prospect, including the highly-touted ones, in history.

(Man, to think this began with me agreeing with you that to call his swing "slump-proof" was premature, but not wanting you to weaken your point with what I thought was your ignorance - since corrected! - of his experience with wooden bats.)

I don't have a dog in this fight, but FWIW, I initially took the "how many" question to be more or less rhetorical, although on further review, I can see how that's not the only reasonable interpretation.
I certainly agree with the premise, if I understand that correctly--there's no need to rush the kid. OTOH, he might surprise and delight all us Natsville cats. "18 with a bullet..."
*********
The kid has never faced major league, or even minor league pitching. How man yAB's has he had with a wodden bat? The AFL is not Nevada junior college ball. Let's have the kid take 60-70 AB's or so this fall before we go and pronounce him the next Pujols.
Posted by: dfh21 | October 13, 2010 5:26 PM

I am such a sucker, I cannot stay off of this. My initial not so glorious post -- whether anyone agreed with it notwithstanding -- made no call nor did it require any pontification from stevie:

"Yeah, dfh, if you don't know enough to know that Harper's junior college league was a wooden bat league, you might want to refrain from commenting."

stevie's response was not that he disagreed or had a different take, it was that he deemed me unworthy to comment based upon his perception of my ignorance. That was unjustified on both a factual level and a personal one.

Who the Hell is stevie to make that kind of snide remark? (BTW, for anyone seeking deep interpretive meaning, as if this were Elizabethan poetry or some junk, that was a rhetorical question with a point/answer.)

Not that i agree with jwing, as I don;t think that Stras or Harper are worried about the big lcub given their fledgling careers -- though maybe they wish they wer o nthe leftr coast. But, all of those clubs listed by Sunderland are in better shape than the Nats, but for the Royals, maybe.

Better shape today? Better for what? Making the playoffs during the years Stras and Harper will be Nats?

Hard to predict things a year or three out.

Anyone projected the Padres to be good this year? Or did 3 years ago it look like the D-Backs were gonna be one of the worst teams in baseball? People felt good about the Mariners this year, huh?
In '95, were people saying the Marlins were looking like a team that would win the world series in a couple years?

Three years from now, the Nats could still stink. Or three years from now they could be in the playoffs. There's too many variables to predict.

But their chances of being in the playoffs during the Harper, Stras arbitration years is about as good as a bunch of other teams.

But basically, we're agreeing, they really don't care (although the west coast notion may be legit).

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